Development of flat panel absorber for steel bridges and verification of the improvement of unwanted radar clutter by simulation

In this paper, a new type of flat panel absorber is presented, which is composed by a nonperiodic pattern of low conductive carbon sticks deployed randomly on a highly flexible dielectric substrate, above a perfect electric conductor (PEC). The absorber works in the frequency band around 10 GHz and provides good absorption while providing a wide bandwidth, and is more or less independent to the incoming polarization of the wave. Due to the selected materials, the absorber can be used for outdoor application, e.g. on the main girders of steel bridges above rivers to suppress unwanted signal clutter on the ships radars. To prove this, an advanced simulation tool has been developed which allows the fast simulation of huge obstacles and environments.